He finished dressing as fast as he could and rushed back down into the basement, shoved the freezer over, blocking the storm shelter door, came back upstairs, throwing the basement door deadbolt as an added precaution. He snatched up his radio, did a last quick look around. Tried to convince himself things were under control here, at least for now, at least until he could get back. A couple minutes later he was in his cruiser heading north toward the Methodist church, one thing on his mind: killing Jesse Walker.
ISABEL PULLED LACY into the shadows next to the front steps of the Methodist church. She knelt down, looked Lacy directly in the eyes. “Okay, Lacy. It’s time. Like we talked about. You ready?”
The little girl’s face clouded. “I don’t want you to go, Isabel.”
“I know. I don’t wanna go neither. But I got to. So, I need you to be strong . . . strong for the both of us. Because if you start crying, you’re gonna make me cry. Then they might catch me. I might get in bad trouble.”
Lacy set her face and nodded. “I won’t cry none, Isabel. Promise.” Isabel saw then just how much mettle this little girl had, understood that she had to be strong to have survived what she’d been through.
Two women, both looking to be in their late thirties, both overweight, with faces that appeared to have seen plenty of hardship, came up the walkway, mounted the steps, and entered the church. They looked like good, God-fearing folk to Isabel, hill folk, the kind of women she felt she could trust.
“Lacy, I want you to go inside and introduce yourself to those two ladies. You remember what I told you to say?”
“That my mamma and daddy are dead. That a lady I don’t know dropped me off. That she told me to find someone to help me.”
“That’s right. Now give me a hug and run on in there after them.”
The girl hugged her, hugged her as tight as a six-year-old could. Isabel had to blink back the tears, knowing the last thing Lacy needed right now was to see her crying. Isabel pulled away, pointed Lacy in the direction of the steps, and gave her a light push. Lacy headed up the steps, reached the big doors, hesitated, giving Isabel an unsure look.
Isabel nodded and blew her a kiss.
Lacy tugged on one of the heavy double doors. It budged a little, but she couldn’t get it open. She tried twice more, then looked at Isabel and shrugged.
“Heck,” Isabel said, dashing out of the shadows and up the stairs. She pulled the big door open, ushered Lacy in, and took a quick peek inside. A foyer with double doors led into the chapel; through the stained-glass windows, she could hear music and see people moving. A flight of steps headed down on the right and left side of the foyer. She caught sight of a handwritten sign that read: DIVORCE RECOVERY. An arrow pointed down the stairs on the left, and Isabel understood where the women must’ve been heading.
“That way,” she called to Lacy in a hushed tone, pointing toward the stairs.
“Huh?” Lacy said, looking confused.
“The women went down—” Isabel heard voices coming up behind her, and a quick glance over her shoulder revealed four women heading up the walkway. Having no other route, she ducked into the foyer, snatched Lacy by the hand, and hustled her down the short flight of stairs. They pushed through a set of swinging doors at the bottom of the steps and came out into a long, dim corridor. There were two doors ahead, the closest one was shut, the one at the end of the hall stood open, a bright light pouring out into the hall, revealing another handwritten sign.
Laughter, the drumming of feet, people were coming down the stairs behind them. Isabel ran up to the first door, gave the knob a twist. It was locked. There was nowhere else to go. She put her shoulder into it, gave it a hard slam, the door held. She tried again, harder, heard the doorjamb crack.
“Excuse me. Can we help you?”
Isabel spun about to find four women staring at her from the bottom of the stairs. She tried to keep her head down, her eyes averted.
“Do we know you?” a stout woman, wearing a woodland-green hunting jacket, asked loudly. She was the smaller of the four, but her manner let you know right away that she didn’t put up with any nonsense. “Girl, look here at me.” She took a step closer, got a better look at Isabel, and stopped in her tracks. “What in the hell?”
“What’s going on?” another voice called from the opposite end of the hall. A woman, slight of build and wearing a simple knee-length dress, stood in the glow of the room light. “Gail, is that you. What’s the matter?” Three more women came out of the room behind her.
Isabel realized she was trapped. She gauged the women in front of the stairs, figured she would have to rush them, barrel her way through, and hope for the best. Only she wasn’t so sure she could, not if they put up a fight. These were big, hard-looking women, wearing flannel shirts and boots, the wives and daughters of miners, solid women who’d raised plenty of kids and been around more than their fair share of mean. And just when Isabel thought things couldn’t get much worse, five more women came down the stairs, peeking curiously over the others, trying to get a better look at her and Lacy.
“It’s one of them!” one of the newcomers shouted. She pointed at Isabel. “Look. One of the ones from the paper. One of the crazies that’s been causing all the trouble.”
“Lady, whatcha doing with that little girl, there?” the woman in the hunting jacket asked, and Isabel heard everything she needed in that tone, knew what she was being accused of, knew her trouble had just ratcheted up a notch.
“Cindy,” the woman called. “Go call the police. Tell Mark and the boys to get down here. Quick now, run!”
One of the girls in the back of the pack scampered back up the stairs. Isabel understood that she had to do something quick. She took a step away from Lacy.
“Don’t even think about it,” the woman said. The women pushed the double doors shut behind them, flipped the latch, and tightened ranks. “You ain’t going nowhere.”
REVEREND OWEN STOOD halfway up the ladder, clutching a mirrored disco globe the size of a basketball to his chest.
“Hold it steady, Scott,” he said with more than a hint of frustration.
“I got it already, Granddaddy. Here, you want me to hang it?”
“No,” Reverend Owen snapped. “I don’t want you to hang it. I want you to hold the dadgum ladder steady.” The reverend wasn’t the least bit happy about turning his church into a disco hall, but he wasn’t blind, either, at least not yet. He could see that his congregation was aging and if he didn’t step up his efforts with the younger generations, soon he’d have no church at all. Still, at times, he felt he was spending more time catering to social club activities than preaching the Good Word.
The reverend missed the old days, back when his wife and him went door-to-door, a Bible tucked beneath their arms, spreading the gospel, giving people who had nothing something to believe in. He recalled being chased off by dogs, being shot at, being cursed and ridiculed. But that had only fired him up, because he was a soldier of the Lord, casting out Satan wherever he found him, and filling the hard-living folks of Boone County up with the Holy Spirit. It’d been a long time now since the reverend had last felt the Holy Spirit pumping in his own veins, long time since he’d felt much other than the fatigue of managing his ever-mounting administrative duties and the frustration of sorting out the petty squabbles of his congregation.